#qi-hardware IRC log for Tuesday, 2011-09-20

yup. apperently (and maybe you are right and I'm making no sense) one can run anything over CAT5. I know I have an APC BackUPS uninterrupted power-supply which connects to the UPS with an Ethernet jack and to the workstation with a USB jack for monitoring. I'm looking for that page right now.

so in theory, if one had to do this, they would have to write new drivers for their Ethernet card to get it to talk to a USB slave, bacuse, it takes USB host drivers to talk to a USB slave which Ethernet does not have?

I see. this makes more sense now... So, I can make such a cable myself to connect my ADSL modem from its Etheren jack to a PC's USB port, but I cannot do much with the nanonote because USB required a USB host which I will not have with a nanonote+ethernet combo.

you can't connect USB host (PC) to Ether (ADSL modem) directly either. you need an USB-to-Ethernet dongle for it. but yes, they're relatively simple (probably just one major chip), so you could in theory make one yourself.

I see, I can make one but I will need to buy a little board which has a chip in it and input for both ethernet and usb cabling/jacks. One last question, and I know I went beyond the Nanonote here :) - will it work on Linux, or is this what you mean by "driver situation" - it might require some proprietary software to talk to that chip?